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On 1/2/2026 at 8:30 AM, Pancho said:

As do the following phrases:

“Tuddy”

“Sark is in his bag”

“Jawja”

I'm fine with 'Tuddy' when being intentionally funny, but yeah, those other two have got to go.

Edited by William Bludworth

  • Author

David Ubben: Indiana is part Cinderella story, part spirit-breaking bully, and ‘the secret’s in the dirt’

ATLANTA — Cinderella wears combat boots and brass knuckles. She’s got a gold tooth, a face tattoo and a mean right hook. For most of its history, Indiana football wasn’t an underdog as much as a doormat, but its unprecedented two-year rise is nearing an inconceivable mountaintop as the Hoosiers head to Hard Rock Stadium to face Miami with a national title at stake. On Friday night, they feasted on Oregon for 60 minutes in a 56-22 win. They have been more dominant than any team in College Football Playoff history through two games, with wins over Alabama and Oregon by a combined 69 points. No other team in Playoff history has won two games by more than 55 total points.

That’s the way they like it. And they’re used to seeing opponents wrestle with the reality as it sets in that they can’t measure up. “Body language tells you a lot,” offensive lineman Kahlil Benson said. “They’re a good team, but I felt like we broke them.” When exactly that happened is a source of debate around the locker room, but there were plenty of candidates in Friday’s beatdown. Byron Baldwin delivered a big hit on the game’s opening kick. “That was a tone-setter,” offensive tackle Carter Smith said.

A play later, cornerback D’Angelo Ponds picked off Dante Moore and ran 25 yards for a touchdown. Oregon answered with a touchdown of its own, but Indiana scored the game’s next 35 points. At plenty of moments along the way, the bully smelled blood. Center Pat Coogan, the MVP of Indiana’s Rose Bowl rout over Alabama, looked across the line of scrimmage and saw an Oregon defensive front that had enough. “That’s one of the great joys in life,” Coogan said. “But it takes a lot of work to get to that point.”

Hoosiers, they are. “Hoosiers,” this isn’t. Cignetti has built a juggernaut at a place where such a thing seemed impossible for the past 139 years. In that span, the program won just two conference titles. It hadn’t won the Big Ten since Lyndon B. Johnson was president. How, exactly, a relative unknown like Cignetti arrived in Bloomington and engineered the greatest two-year coaching job in sports history is a question without a simple answer.

The best explanation is that he recruited a team full of players who embrace the Saban-esque pursuit of perfection and treat Peach Bowls the same as voluntary June workouts. “There’s no magic pill you can swallow. There’s no secret sauce,” Coogan said. “The secret’s in the dirt. The secret’s in the work.”

Indiana is an older team, with a depth chart stocked with more 20-somethings on their second or third school than teenagers learning how to do laundry and live on their own for the first time. That helps, too. The Hoosiers love slamming opponents’ faces in the dirt, but more than that, they’re the team that makes the fewest mistakes. If coaches submitted film complete with play calls for stat-keeping, it’s a safe bet Indiana would lead the nation in fewest missed assignments.

“Although social media before the year was like, ‘Oh, Cinderella story,’ we had all the internal belief in the facility behind closed doors,” Mendoza said. “And I believe that’s what helped propel us to this moment.” The Hoosiers refuse to let up. With 13 minutes left and a 27-point lead, defensive lineman Daniel Ndukwe rushed a punt and blocked it. “Once that blocked punt hit, that felt like the moment they were starting to pump the brakes,” Smith said. Cignetti, stoic and unimpressed as always from the sideline, looked on, muttering to his coaching staff on the headset.

Three plays later, Indiana was in the end zone, receiver Elijah Sarratt celebrating his second touchdown catch of the night and his seventh catch on seven targets. “We’re trying to impose our will every single game,” tight end Riley Nowakowski said. Added Smith, “That’s part of our DNA.”

A season ago, Indiana won games by 74, 38, 37, 49 and 66 points. This year, it beat teams by 47, 73, 53, 50, 45 and 53 points, including a 63-10 win over an Illinois team that was ranked in the top 10 at kickoff and finished 9-4. Now, it’s continuing that dominance in the College Football Playoff as pundits wonder where all the great teams in the sport went. “It’s something we say on the sideline all the time. Step on their throat. Finish the job,” said left guard Drew Evans.

Cignetti took over an Indiana team with five bowl bids and 11 seasons with three or fewer wins in the past 30 years. The Hoosiers went to the Playoff in Year 1 and smacked their head against the ceiling. In Year 2, they smashed through it and will be a heavy favorite on the road in a national championship game in the Hurricanes’ home stadium on Jan. 19. It’s a Disney movie on paper. But Disney doesn’t make movies about Darth Vader choking out hapless opponents with The Force all season. “Plucky overachievers” couldn’t be a less apt descriptor of Cignetti’s smart, speedy, smashmouth ballerinas hauling in tiptoe back-shoulder catches along the sideline.

Indiana is 14th nationally in yards per carry. Mendoza led the nation in passer rating and has eight touchdown passes and five incompletions in two Playoff games. The defense is ninth in yards per play allowed and second in points allowed. No team in the country looks as complete as the Hoosiers, the only team in college football that has yet to experience a losing locker room. Indiana is a bully and a Cinderella story all wrapped up in one compelling package.

On Friday night, a giant speaker boomed house music as players danced and celebrated another dominant victory, one step away from completing a season that’s already a dream come to life. The program has its first Heisman Trophy and its first Big Ten title since 1967. Now, it is 60 minutes away from capturing the program’s first national title in Cignetti’s second season, months after the coach signed an extension to keep scowling in Bloomington in perpetuity.

Win that game, and that scowl might be immortalized in bronze somewhere outside Memorial Stadium. “We ain’t done yet,” Benson said.

(Grace Raynor) Dante Moore, Oregon try to make sense of miserable ending to season: ‘We beat ourselves’

ATLANTA — After it was over, the tears in Dante Moore’s eyes started to well up. The Oregon quarterback lingered on the sideline at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and began to hug coaches and teammates, one by one. When he connected with offensive lineman Iapani Laloulu, the Ducks center gave his quarterback a quick kiss on the cheek and started to pray with him. “I love you, boy,” Laloulu told him as Moore buried his head into Laloulu’s chest, his own upper body rising and falling with each emotional breath.

Then the Ducks’ young star walked off the field for the final time this season. He wiped his nose, flashed an “O” with his hands to the Oregon faithful and headed down the winding tunnel and toward the locker room to be with his teammates.

Moore, the redshirt sophomore who came to the West Coast from Detroit, has had plenty of dazzling moments in his No. 5 Oregon uniform. But Friday night against Indiana was a real-life nightmare in a 56-22 Oregon loss that somehow didn’t even feel that close. Moore finished the night 24-of-39 passing for 285 yards, two touchdowns and three turnovers in what will go down as one of the most frustrating nights of his career.

No one felt that more deeply than Moore. “First things first, the quarterback has to protect the football,” he said. “(Indiana) has a great defense, great disguise and different looks, but you can’t win football games if you’re causing turnovers. (That’s) something of course I need to work at.” The frustration kicked in early for Moore, who, in the game’s first play from scrimmage, threw a pick six straight into the hands of Indiana cornerback D’Angelo Ponds. Just 11 seconds into the game, the Hoosiers were up 7-0, with the overwhelmingly pro-Indiana crowd nearly bursting at the seams right from the jump.

Moore composed himself in the Ducks’ subsequent drive and led Oregon to a touchdown as the Ducks effectively attacked Indiana both through the air and on the ground to tie the score at 7. But midway through the second quarter, he fumbled when his arm hit freshman running back Dierre Hill Jr. on a run-pass option play. Indiana recovered at the Oregon 3-yard line and was in the end zone within 70 seconds. Later in the second quarter, Moore fumbled again — this time after he was sacked for a loss of 8 yards to put the Hoosiers at the Oregon 21. Spoiler alert: IU scored again. “Indiana’s defense is great,” Moore said. “But at the end of the day, we beat ourselves.”

After Oregon lost at home to Indiana 30-20 in October — Oregon’s only loss before Friday — the Ducks vowed that they’d make adjustments this time around and come in ready to attack an Indiana defense that makes life miserable for opposing quarterbacks with disguises and post-snap movement. But Moore could never get into a rhythm, with the Ducks either giving the ball away, punting or turning the ball over on downs on eight of their 12 drives. They were down 35-7 by halftime and 49-15 early in the fourth quarter. The run game, behind a thin group of Oregon running backs, didn’t help either. Indiana held Oregon to 93 yards on 26 carries.

“Our philosophy is to attack and we are moving a lot of pieces in the front seven,” Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said. “And we’ve always been top five in the country against the run, TFLs and sacks and that’s just our philosophy on how to play defense.”

Moore said when he watches the tape back of what became his hellacious night, he’ll watch not only his mistakes and his offense’s issues, but the play of Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, too. Mendoza, by contrast, was lights out — the Heisman Trophy winner completed 85 percent of his passes for 177 yards and five touchdowns. “I give him his credit,” Moore said. “Somebody I’m going to stay in touch with when it comes to just talking ball, talking life. Quarterbacks learn from each other. And I’m excited how much I can learn from this game and learn from my future coming up.”

Speaking of that future, Moore has a big decision to make in the coming weeks about whether he wants to declare for the NFL Draft or return to Oregon for another season. He’s a projected first-rounder — and possibly a contender with Mendoza to go No. 1 overall — but as late Friday night inched toward early Saturday morning, he said he did not yet have an answer. The shock of it all was still setting in, his eyes wide and looking straight ahead at nothing in particular. This night will no doubt haunt him for the months and years to come.

“I knew that question was coming,” Moore said of his future. “I want to soak this moment up. That’s most important. Just giving hugs and just thank yous to my teammates, but at the end of the day, I don’t know my decision yet. I’m going to talk to coach (Dan) Lanning and talk to my family and everybody, but at the end of the day, I don’t want to think about that right now. I just want to think about my teammates and give love to them.”

12 hours ago, satyanash said:

+rep, love a spider chart

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